Taking action in our local communities is where resistance of Trump’s agenda begins. It is among the people to whom we are closest that we are likely to find our first allies if we begin to look.

Like the majority of the country, I’ve been reading and watching news about President-elect Donald Trump with a mix of trepidation and horror. The blatant ineptitude of him and his staff to do any of the duties that have befallen him is laid bare for all to see. Trump’s actions demonstrate a complete lack of respect for the press, for free speech, and of course for women and minorities. I’m pretty sure he hasn’t read the Constitution. Numbered among his supporters are neo-Nazis, white-power groups, angry neocons, and of course the economically disenfranchised and economically over-franchised who voted for him.

However, I have also seen lists from both Bernie Sanders and Robert Reich of actions we can take. I’m emboldened and comforted by these. I’ve used those lists as inspiration and foundation for the list below, focusing on actions we can take in our local communities.

Get your town, city, or county officials to state their points of view about Trump’s election. Do they support him and his policies? Why or why not? Find out where they stand. If you can, urge them to declare or resolve that your community will be a safe haven for free speech and minorities.

Get the necessary permits or permission and establish a 7-days a week presence on a corner with signs, megaphones, pamphlets. Speak your mind and be heard, even about local issues. Let the community know there are people who are aware and concerned.

Write letters to the Editor of your local paper(s).

Talk to your local business community or chamber of commerce. Are they willing to denounce Trump’s business practices and be public about it? Are they willing to stop carrying Trump merchandise?

Look at your community’s voting data (your secretary of state will have this information). How many voted Trump, or Hillary Clinton, or wrote in someone else? If there are even 20 people who didn’t vote Trump, write a letter to your local newspaper asking them to reach out to you — even anonymously.

Get organized through voter lists (they are usually at the Town Clerk’s office: you won’t see how people vote, but you will likely see party affiliations).

Get to know your community or your neighbors. What are people worried about? How can those worries be addressed by your city council or select board? Now is not the time for isolationism.

We know that Trump is likely to target minorities, education, and women’s health care. Get connected with these in your community and understand the relevant concerns. Ask what you can do to help.

Join a board or run for office if you can.

Keep track of Trump’s policy decisions and ideas for the future. Work with local and state politicians to understand how they will impact your community. Publicize that information often (see number 2).

It’s easy to get lost in the national quagmire and feel overwhelmed. It’s easy to fall into the rut of swinging the pendulum the other way. If we focus locally and look to our families, friends, neighborhoods, and communities instead, we can become hubs of protection and action. We can make small differences where we live. If each of us makes a small difference, big differences begin to take shape.

Yesterday, Johnson State College raised flags in support of Black Lives Matter and the LGBTQ+ communities. At a time when there needs to be unified voices rising against bigotry and hatred, the gesture is extremely important, if symbolic. JSC is already an inclusive and safe campus, but to take this action now is to reaffirm that commitment. Having been an undergrad, grad student, and now an alumni with a wife and son attending, I’m proud and honored to be associated with JSC.

Designed to ensure that urban centers didn’t have an unequal voice in the election of the president of the United States and that the president was elected by states not people, the Electoral College bears some re-examination in light of contemporary society.

Under the United States Constitution, the office of president was not intended to represent the people, but rather be a representative of the republic itself. The voice of the people is established in the House of Representatives and to a lesser degree the U.S. Senate. To that end, the electoral college was created as a compromise as part of Article 2 of the U.S. Constitution. Additionally, the states were left to their own devices as to the manner in which electors for president were chosen.

To be clear, when we vote for president, we are not voting for the person, but are in actuality voting for the electors who will then cast their vote for the person. In the same way that we vote for senators and representatives who cast their vote on our behalves regarding laws, budget, etc.

The problem with this method is that as the country has gotten larger, as the issues have become more complex, the president has been looked at as a caretaker of the nation’s intentions and potential and the bi-party political system that is embedded in our process isn’t allowing for the wide spectrum of needs. Because of this, there is — and has been — a loud cry for a popular vote to elect president.

That might seem like the right answer, but in that case, control of the office would go to the largest population centers which systemically have different needs than the rest of the country. In this election, data shows that the majority of people in rural America do not feel that Clinton is the right person for the job. A popular vote would essentially eliminate their voices. It’s not democracy if it’s oppression by the majority (Madison, Federalist Papers No. 10).

Here’s what I am thinking about:

Make all primaries open and non-party specific. Change them all to direct election rather than caucuses. Don’t let the political parties control primaries, let the primaries stem from the number of candidates. Allow the primaries to the opportunity to winnow the entire field, not just the candidates from major parties.

Allow all winners of primaries to take part in national debates for president. Again, remove the influence of political parties. Let everyone debate so that the public is better informed.

Make electoral votes in each state proportional (like Maine does, for instance).This ensures that dissenting voices are heard and that the electoral votes more accurately represent the people without giving complete control to large population centers. Each state would maintain the number of electoral votes (number of senators plus the number of representatives). The percent a candidate gets is the percent of the electoral votes they receive.

If no majority of the electoral votes is received by any candidate, the process would work as today.

As I’ve thought this through, I believe that we would see the following results:

We would have a greater participation in the primary process.

Party politics would have less of an effect on selection of candidates, thus also improving voter turnout.

Third-party candidates would be given the voices they deserve in a democracy.

We maintain the balance between rural and urban needs that the electoral college maintains, while also making individual votes matter more.

We begin to erode the idea of “blue” and “red” states and binary thinking in general and our government becomes more representative of the actual population rather than political parties.

As a designer and systems philosopher, while I understand the need for a re-vamped electoral process, I think we cannot afford to just delete something we don’t like. We need to understand why it doesn’t work and for whom, how it can be made better, and move forward with an attitude of experimentation in order to truly fix it.

Lastly, I cannot stress enough the need for voter turnout to increase especially in the non-presidential cycle. The Constitution grants that the House and Senate are the direct voices of the people. They are our tools for keeping an unpopular president in check. While I believe that the electoral college can and should be redesigned, it won’t make things better if we don’t participate where it matters.

This is a longer one. Basically, I’m saying that I expected Trump to become president. I’m not happy about it, and I think I know how it happened. I have a few ideas on things we can focus on and maybe make the election process a little better the next time around.

What I originally wanted to do here was just write a big old “I told you so” in big old capital letters. Over and over and over again. I wanted to do that so badly, because it is unbelievably frustrating being someone who tried to speak up about the risk of running Hillary Clinton against Donald Trump. I was denigrated and harangued because of that, and I’m kind of not over it yet. But blowing a big raspberry at the general public is immature and unhelpful. It’s time to move on (see Michael Moore for his opinion on this matter). This will take longer to read than a big raspberry, but it’s time to look at the wreckage, salvage what we can, and move forward. That’s my perspective, and that’s my advice.

So what can we salvage? Well, if anyone was confused about or unwilling to believe how divided and angry our country is, that should be all cleared up now. Donald Trump won. If that’s not evidence of anger and division, I don’t know what is. Also, a bunch of people voted third party and exercised their option to write-in a candidate of their choosing. Don’t be angry at them, because they voted their conscience. We can work with them. Third, according to a variety of sources, voter turnout was lower this year than in both 2008 and 2012, though it seems to have hovered around the usual percentage of recent history at about 43% of the eligible voting age population. We knew early on that we need a high turnout for the success of progressive and Democrat ideas, and it didn’t happen. Lastly, the mainstream media — well, media in general — is not giving us the whole story and in fact may not know it. They were caught just as unaware by Trump’s election as the Democrats were. With an attempt and non-denigration and blame, I want to spend a little time talking about these and looking at what we can do in the future.

Anger & fear

Like we’ve been trying to do with institutional racism, it’s time to acknowledge the economic and gender disparities in the United States. A certain population of white males are feeling threatened (see the rise of Alt-Right groups meeting in the open, for example) by the idea that black’s and women’s lives matter. Women still get less pay than men. People living in poverty and out of work feel left behind by the “good news” conversations about our economy, and the concerns of the Occupy Wall Street movement have not ever been fully addressed. Multiple deaths at the hands of police, rise in paranoia among NRA supporters, and a fervent adherence to guns. All of these things have contributed in their own way to a pervasive and infections sense of anger that drives fear that feeds more anger. Trump tapped into this and used it as a lever to get elected. We can no longer deny these feelings in our country, nor should we.

Instead, we need to spend time as a nation understanding the sources of this fear and anger. Give honor to people’s feelings by recognizing them as real. We may not agree with the reasons for the feelings, but we cannot deny that they are being felt. Problems have never been solved by hiding them, nor have feelings ever been overcome by burying them. If we want to avoid more emotionally-triggered elections like this one, we need to understand where the triggers are and how to address them. For example, I may not agree with the Alt-Right, or be able to fully empathize with the Black Lives Matter movement, but I can work to understand the sources of their fear and anger (respectively) and see what I can do about addressing them. We may not find the right solution, but we can’t just ignore the problems.

Vote your voice & Voter turnout

This issue combines the rights of voters to vote their way without interference with the likelihood of voters to do that. I’ve been studying voter turnout trends for a few years, and since about 1964, we’ve elected a president and members of congress with around 40% of registered voters, or about 30% of the eligible voting population (some people don’t ever register to vote). What this means in shorthand, is that about 16% of the eligible voting population chose Trump. It looks like a large number when we look at the popular vote number, but the United States is a country with just over 330 million people. Trump and the Republicans will call this a mandate, but the reality is that it’s not more of a mandate than any other election. What his success truly represents is a very vocal minority brought him to power.

In truth, it is always a very vocal minority who participates in elections. Mostly because of lack of interest or lack of choices. This year was no different. About six to seven percent of the voters exercised their rights to vote for a candidate other than Clinton or Trump (full disclosure: I wrote in Bernie Sanders). You may not like it, but it’s completely understandable. Both candidates were more disliked than any other candidate in the history of the United States. The most liked candidate (Sanders) was left behind by the Democrats (or so it feels). People are frustrated (see “Anger & Fear” above) with the status quo, with what they feel is a rigged system, and the success of Trump along with the “inevitability” of Clinton led these voters to express themselves by choosing others as their candidates. We can’t avoid this happening if we truly want to live in a democratic society and the people who chose to do this are right to make that choice.

Neither of these issues can be solved through anger towards voters. The system we have in place that includes private organizations creating rules for who can be a candidate (political parties), the amount of money required to run for office, the reduction of polling places in certain areas, gerrymandering, the unraveling of the Voting Rights Act, the distribution of population, the size of our country, and the general feelings of the electorate all fed into turnout numbers and people’s decisions at the polls. We don’t correct those by blaming people. We correct those by looking at the triggers of human behavior and seeing if we can fix them. We can make it easier to vote. We can create public funds for campaigns. We can increase the number of political parties and change the rules for being included in debates. In short, if we want to experience an election where there are higher turnouts of people who are excited to vote, we need to make sure they are voting for things that make sense to them and can do it as easily as possible.

The media

It’s a standard truth of civics that a democracy (i.e., a society where government is chosen through a voting populace) requires an informed electorate. It is to this task that journalism — a portion of “the media” — is supposed to be bent. Journalism at its root should be informing the public about the activities of government, the goings-on of police, the happenings in their community. It should supply educated and opinion and perspective on those events, as well. Because of the importance of it, Thomas Jefferson once called newspaper “the fourth estate” of society, meaning that it should serve as a watchdog of the government, the merchants, and the people themselves. It is because of this importance that the First Amendment exists. Journalists must be allowed to speak freely in order to provide the fullest possible picture to their public. We all know, however, that this has not been true for some years.

News is big business and is handled by a handful of corporations who in some cases also own the means of distribution (Comcast, AT&T, ClearChannel). This narrowed ownership of distribution by big business creates a system that is about profit more more than it ever has been. While profit has always been required to ensure the existence of news, it’s a relatively recent endeavor to use the news to drive profit up (maybe in the last 75 years or so). The upshot of this is that the news covers only those things that a) ensure viewership/readership, b) do not anger corporate partners, and c) do not run afoul of advertising interests/investment partners.

Given these constraints, it is inevitable that journalism will begin to soften its reporting of controversial issues and increase coverage of things that “sell” their content. It’s generally known that people don’t like to be forced into thinking as much as they like seeing explosions, bad guys getting arrested, gossipy opinions, and the like. This kind of action moves the news industry away from the watchdog role envisioned by Jefferson, to a kind of entertainment that actually serves to dull the capacity of the electorate to understand what their government is doing and why.

So what can we do? Well, we could stop watching/reading/listening to the corporate owned news, for one. There are alternative options that did a pretty good job of reporting on controversy over the last two years or so. We can also avoid getting news from forums like DailyKOS, Reddit, or Facebook unless we understand the difference between fact and opinion (i.e. those sites provide user-generated content about events, so are always spun from a personal point of view). Also, we can report on news on our own through YouTube, Vimeo, TwitchTV, Periscope, WordPress, and other streaming and viewing sources. There are lots of resources online on how to do journalism (here’s a start), and there are groups available that provide the kind of legal protection afforded journalists. I’m a member of Investigative Reports and Editors (IRE) and their resources are pretty good. Just remember that journalism is not gossip, libel, or innuendo. It requires multiple points of view and research.

Wrap-up

In short, then, Trump’s election should not be a surprise to anyone. We are a country of anger and fear manipulated by stories told to us by a profit-driven media so that we either vote the way we’re “supposed to” or don’t vote at all. In this system, there is no room to blame the people or ourselves. Ultimately, we are responsible for our own actions, of course, but it is the system that generates the problems, and the problems will only go away if we change the system. Once we do that, once we can see the system for what it is, we can start to be more informed about the decisions we make.

Some final advice taken from, like, a ton of stuff I’ve written over the years:

Focus locally. Hold your local politicians accountable for everything they do and say. If they falter, tell them. If they falter too much, vote them out.

Think critically about what you read and what you are told. If it doesn’t make sense, or if you just want a second opinion, look somewhere else for the same story. Ask family or friends what they think.

Never vote how you’re told. Vote the way you feel is best.

Most importantly, never let anger or fear drive your decisions. Feeling anger and being afraid are normal emotions, but they also make it difficult for us to think and change our perspective on the world. Do fear or anger drive your decisions? If so, try to ask yourself why and take a pause

That’s it for now. Let’s see what we can salvage and where we can go from here. Don’t lose heart.

Language is important. It is the medium through which humans engage with the universe, world, society, and each other. Without language, it has been argued, there would be no thought and therefore humanity as we know it would not be possible. The ability to use language is arguably the most important advantage humans have over other animals, and has contributed more directly than any other technology to our evolution and success/rampant rise as a species. Language is so necessary to our survival, in fact, that any person, entity, or agency responsible for using it in order to document events, or share news and information as they happen should be held to a much higher standard than it seems they currently are. This becomes especially important during key moments in the unfolding of history. Like right now.

The 2016 presidential elections are supremely important for many reasons, and because of that importance, the information necessary for voters to make informed decisions must be communicated clearly and without impediment. Unfortunately this year is no different than every other documented year on record since the beginning of human history as far as the manipulation of language goes.

Earlier this week, the Washington Post published an article by Glenn Kessler claiming that Bernie Sanders was wrong in saying that Hillary Clinton called him unqualified to be president. NBC News under the authorship of Chuck Todd went so far as to paint Sanders as a liar. It all started with an interview between Clinton and Joe Scarborough. He asked if Clinton thought Sanders was unqualified, and she responded in a way that clearly implied her answer was yes, but without actually saying yes (emphasis mine).

SCARBOROUGH: But do you think he is qualified? And do you think he is able to deliver on the things he is promising to all these Democratic voters?
CLINTON: Well, let me put it this way, Joe. I think that what he has been saying about the core issue in his whole campaign doesn’t seem to be rooted in an understanding of either the law or the practical ways you get something done. And I will leave it to voters to decide who of us can do the job that the country needs, who can do all aspects of the job, both on the economic domestic issues and on national security and foreign policy.

So, what did Clinton say here? Well, knowing that the job of president is to understand and execute laws, and she said that Sanders doesn’t have that understanding, it seems that she said he’s not qualified. For example, if one was told after a job interview to be a chef, that “I think that what you’ve been saying about food isn’t rooted in an understanding on how to get meals made,” it would be clear that the interviewer felt you were unqualified. Being a chef requires an understanding of food in the same way being president requires an understanding of law and the execution of it. Clinton did what party line politicians have always done which is rather than use language to clearly address a question, she used it to protect herself and obfuscate her meaning. Since she never said the word “unqualified” she can claim innocence, when of course it’s clear what she means if it’s given a little thought.

Another note here is that all journalists are trained to understand the difference between saying and meaning. One of the core functions of a journalist is to extract meaning from statements in which it has been obfuscated. Kessler, Scarborough, Todd, and all of the other journalists who jumped on this bandwagon are culpable in the obfuscation of meaning by not calling it out and revealing the meaning behind what Clinton said. Sanders in fact was telling the truth when he claimed in Philedelphia that Clinton said he was unqualified. She did say it, because “saying” is the act of “utter[ing] words so as to convey information, an opinion, a feeling or intention”.

Of course, this kind of obfuscation is not new. This year is the 70th anniversary of one of George Orwell’s most enduring and relevant essays: Politics and the English Language. Within it, he analyzes and deconstructs political writing as a bastardization of language. Unfortunately, what he says is still wildly relevant (which he predicted).

Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.

It is the job, then, of politicians and their cohorts to allude to truth without revealing it, to imply meaning without implicating themselves, and to obfuscate reality to benefit themselves and their goals. This was true for Orwell in 1946, and it’s true for us in 2016. And just as Orwell felt compelled to comment on the use of languge in his time, we need journalists and analysts now with the courage to comment on its use in ours. The use of language in this way masks truth and suppresses the search for real meaning. However, this pattern of language use can also be used to reveal those who are speaking the truth. Orwell again (emphasis mine):

In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a ‘party line’. Orthodoxy, of whatever colour, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestos, White papers and the speeches of undersecretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, homemade turn of speech.

In other words, when that person appears among the political class who speaks clearly, who does not adhere to party lines, who is considered unorthodox and perhaps dangerous to the status quo, who is vivid with words and speech, it is a moment in which we should listen. It is a moment to recognize the differences and judge for ourselves whether what this outsider is saying is worthy of merit. This is the core of the process for seeking truth and meaning, and in the failure of the Fourth Estate to assist with this cause, we must do it on our own.

Seventy years following the publication of Orwell’s essay, we are being presented with an example of each of the kinds of political speakers he mentions. The one that adheres to party lines, orthodoxy, and an imitative style; who hides behind words in order to mask meaning. And the other who seems a rebel, but says what people feel is true; a vivid speaker and public figure who uses words to reveal meaning and values truth over political expediency and the language that goes with it.